1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electro-optical device such as a liquid crystal display, to a method of manufacturing the same, and to an electronic apparatus having the electro-optical device.
2. Related Art
An electro-optical device such as a liquid crystal display has been widely used in electronic apparatuses such as mobile phones and handheld terminals. For example, the electro-optical device has been used as a display device for displaying various information concerning an electronic apparatus. The electro-optical device refers to a device that controls an optical output state according to an electrical input. For example, the electro-optical device may include liquid crystal displays, electroluminescent (EL) devices, plasma display devices and the like.
For example, in liquid crystal displays, electrodes are formed on a pair of substrates, and a liquid crystal layer is interposed between the electrodes. The voltage applied to the electrodes is adjusted to control the orientation of liquid crystal molecules within the liquid crystal layer, and light supplied to the liquid crystal layer is modulated through the orientation control. In such a liquid crystal display, in the related art, a plurality of spacers is provided between the pair of substrates blue, green, and red to maintain the thickness of the liquid crystal layer uniform. There is also known a technique in which these spacers are formed by a photolithographic process (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 6-265912 (page 3, FIG. 1)).
However, in the spacers (hereinafter, referred to as ‘photospacer’) formed by the photolithographic process, orientation failures of liquid crystal molecules are likely to occur in the vicinity of the photospacers, which results in optical leakage. As a result, there have been cases in which the display quality of a liquid crystal display deteriorates significantly. Even in electro-optical devices other than liquid crystal displays, when the photospacers are provided, disturbance to the physical properties of an electro-optical material is likely to occur in the vicinity of the photospacers. As a result, there is a possibility that disturbance to the optical characteristics of the electro-optical device will occur.